Kleiner Soldat
by HashtagLEH
Summary: HYDRA wanted more soldiers, and since no one could figure out the formula of the serum used on Captain America, they decided to see if the Soldier's own DNA could create someone stronger. Only one combination worked, and the Kleiner Soldat was born. But he wants his father safe from the pain HYDRA regularly inflicts, so one day he decides to get them to Avengers Tower.
1. Der Kleine Soldat

**Hello! This will probably have infrequent updates - I'm just warning you now. But I wanted to get this up ASAP because I was just too excited! Not abandoning Heart and Soul - I'll just be juggling the two simultaneously.**

 **A few warnings: not graphic dubcon/noncon in the first section, but I don't really think it's a huge issue. You can skip the section if you like - all you need to know is that he's just been sold to HYDRA, and they're collecting his sperm while he's half frozen and out of it so that they can create a child for them to mold. There's also some corporal punishment in here - as of now, it's just from HYDRA, but if that changes I'll put a warning at the beginning of the chapter. It's not graphic, just a couple of sentences, but you know. Just in case. On AO3 I rated this as Mature, but that's because there's also the Explicit rating on there, and M is the highest one here, so I'm rating it on here as T. I think it sort of straddles the two, because it only has the higher rating for violence and blood, but it's not graphic.**

 **Anyway, now that the warnings are out of the way, there are a couple of other things you need to know:**

 **-As Clint is a child in this, he was never a part of the Avengers.**

 **-Natasha defected to SHIELD after Coulson was the one to make the different call not to kill her.**

 **-I'm pretty sure the Russians that owned Bucky from the beginning weren't a part of HYDRA, even though Zola helped create him. I could be wrong, but we're assuming that it was the KGB that owned him earlier on.**

 **-Based on that assumption, around the time the USSR broke apart, the Winter Soldier was sold to HYDRA, and because HYDRA started with Nazis, I feel like Germany would be the base of operations before he shows up on the map like he does in canon. So…yeah.**

 **I'm using Google Translate, so don't hate me for the likely very butchered use of the German language. And Russian, later on.**

 **Hope you enjoy!**

 **...**

The Soldier knows little pleasure. His days – the ones he is aware of, anyway – are filled with structure and order. He knows as soon as he comes out from the freezer where weeks and years blur together into no time at all, that he will be brought into awareness and focus through means he can never quite recall, but which ultimately work in the end. When he comes to awareness, he will have a mission, and have to kill a certain person.

He remembers, once, a very long time ago _(How long ago?)_ , when he had been rewarded with conditioned hair after a successful mission. He remembers the feel of the hands scrubbing his scalp after a mission, not gentle by any means, but not exactly painful either. But, it was the only time he could remember feeling any real sort of satisfaction and enjoyment. When he had gone out to his next mission, before going back to the freezer, he'd liked how his hair didn't fly in his face so much or get caught on the edges of his mask.

But the pleasure he feels when he rises up through the fog of his mind is one completely different from someone washing his hair. He can't quite pinpoint what it is about this pleasure that feels so… _wrong_ …but he knows it feels familiar, and it has no place here. Wherever 'here' is, because that's not something he ever knows or feels the need to ask.

He's struggling to wake up, to fight through the fog that always shrouds his mind while he's in the ice, and he catches a few German words.

 _"…Geh schneller…"_

 _"…Es ist einfacher es selber zu machen …"_

 _"Fick dich..."_

German – why aren't they speaking Russian? His handlers always spoke in Russian, and he can't think hard enough to translate what little he knows of the European language now. But then, it doesn't sound like they're speaking to him anyway, so perhaps he doesn't have to understand?

The pleasure is building steadily, and he feels a heat pooling in his belly. The fog in his head lifts more, and he can make out a blurry ceiling above him with dimmed fluorescent light fixtures, the bodies of three people just outside his line of vision.

 _"Er taut auf – beeil dich."_

 _"Er ist fast fertig."_

The pleasure is shrouding his mind now more than the fog of the freezer, and his hips make a slight, involuntary jerk upwards. It's not enough, not nearly close enough to how much he needs to move, but he hears one of the men chuckle a bit before the pleasure builds and builds on itself until he thinks he won't possibly be able to handle it – and then the muscles in his belly twitch and tighten, and his hips thrust upwards again before the pleasure crashes over him like a stretched rubber band that has finally snapped and he goes limp on the table at the release.

His vision is still blurry, but he hears more German, more words he doesn't even try to make sense of as he blinks sleepily, uncaring of the hands on him, wiping him down with something and adjusting his clothes. It's nothing he's not used to, so it's nothing worthy of note.

His eyes catch on a little clear plastic cup with a red lid as it's passed over his head, and he vaguely sees an inch or so of milky white goo inside before the table he's on is rolled away, out of the room.

And then he feels the sudden cold all around him, dropping below freezing in seconds, and the door closes in front of him, and he thinks no more.

…

He first sees the child when he – the child, that is – is a toddler. The boy has blond hair, and it's cut short so that it's not in his face during his training. He is the youngest person in the room, the next oldest child perhaps six, but this makes him no less skilled than the others.

He _is_ just a toddler though, just barely three years old, and training or not, he lacks the same amount of discipline as the ones three, four years older than him. As the Soldier watches beside his handler, the three year old lifts his body up with his arms and holds his chin above the bar as long as he can, and longer still when the trainer snaps a ruler sharply across the boy's buttocks every time he falters.

Finally the boy can't take it anymore, and even when the trainer snaps the ruler down again in warning and then again in punishment, he can't get back on the bar – his little muscles are too tired now.

"Train him," his handler finally says to him, motioning to the blond child. "The other trainers aren't competent enough to deal with this handful, but there's a chance you might be able to get through to him where none others can. He's enhanced, so don't hold back on him – he'll heal quickly enough. If you can't make some headway with him, we'll have to put him down."

The Soldier nods once. He understands.

…

The Soldier was only out of the ice for three weeks to train the child, but it seemed enough of a start for his handlers. The Soldier had followed his orders and didn't hold back when the child fell short. He was sure not to break anything more important than fingers, because he knew from experience that those healed the quickest.

The child – Yakob, he learned, though it didn't really matter – actually wasn't that bad of a soldier. Not to the extent that the trainers and his handlers had implied, at least, though he's not going to tell them that. He was a fast learner, but the problem was that he was just _too_ young. He didn't have all of the muscles needed yet for what they were training him for.

So, as much as he could in those three weeks, he worked to build the boy's muscle mass. It hurt the child, but it was necessary, just as the punishments were when he knew someone else was watching him train the boy. At least Yakob had learned enough that he knew how useless crying or complaining would be – he just got right back up, and fought through the pain as the Soldier taught him the basics of fighting while simultaneously increasing his strength.

He was just starting to wonder in the back of his mind if he might actually care for the child – an odd feeling, because he knew he wasn't capable of having feelings for someone; that was for people – when he was put back in the freezer. There was no farewell to the boy, no warning, but the Soldier hadn't expected it, anyway. He was just a Soldier, and a single blond-haired boy wasn't going to change that.

…

When he saw the boy again, he had no idea that he'd met him before. He didn't remember the blond child with the blue-grey eyes, because he'd been in the chair before he met the boy again – though to his mind, it was the first time.

He was told to train him for sniping – this time with a hand gun, but when he was older he would know how to use every weapon in existence – up to and including a bow and arrow. He'd had some training with darts and knives before, and his hand-eye coordination was exceptional, so the almost-five-year-old was now to begin using guns from longer distances.

The Soldier didn't need to punish Yakob in those two weeks of training – he was a fast learner, and it seemed that the child cared more about not disappointing him than anything else, and that was a stronger motivator than physical pain. The Soldier didn't understand, because he didn't feel things like disappointment, but he said nothing about it because he knew he was different so it was probably something he would just never understand.

He finished a mission at the end of the two weeks, and shortly after coming back, he sat in the chair that held him down while giving him pain, before he was put back in the freezer until they needed their Asset once again.

…

By the time Yakob was ten, the Soldier had met him for the 'first time' eight times, though with each time he met him he seemed just a touch more familiar. He never spent longer than three weeks at a time training the boy, but it was long enough that Yakob recognized him as soon as he saw him, and seemed to stick closer to him when others were in the room. The Soldier surmised that the boy was one of those things he just forgot, and thought no more of it. The boy was his mission – though a different mission than his usual ones, to be sure. He trained the boy to be an assassin, to bring him up to his own level of expertise.

But the familiarity had its troubles, in the end.

It had happened almost without the Soldier's realizing it – it had been instinct. During the eighth training period, there had been another trainer there, overseeing Yakob's practice with the bow and arrow. The bow and arrow had become Yakob's weapon of choice after hundreds of hours of practice, and although he was good with guns, he had a natural affinity for the bow that the handlers saw no reason to discourage.

The boy had sneezed in the same moment that he released the arrow, and it caused the arrow to go wide, shooting past the target and sticking into the wall next to the Soldier.

The trainer hadn't seemed in the best mood already – though neither of the two soldiers would know any differently – and the arrow hitting the wall rather than the target was apparently the perfect excuse to stride over and begin berating the boy in rapid German. The Soldier had stood by, knowing that it was not his place to disagree with his superiors, but as soon as the trainer had grabbed an arrow from Yakob's quiver and pointed it in his face, saying and illustrating how he would shove it right through the middle of the boy's skull if he was so foolish as to mess up a shot because of a damned sneeze…

The man was down a moment later, the arrow that had been in the wall next to the Soldier a moment before now blooming from his back. It was still and silent in the room for several moments as man and boy watched the trainer choke and bleed out quickly in front of them. It hadn't been a perfect shot, as it hadn't had a bow to release it, but the Soldier had thrown it with enough force through his lung that nothing would have saved him, even if he had gotten help as soon as the arrow punctured skin.

After that however, the Soldier's handlers had come running in with a bunch of gun toting guards, and he had obediently dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head, the ten-year-old following his example feet away from him.

No one cared that he had killed the agent, he surmised later. No, what was upsetting was that he had defended the _Kleiner Soldat_ in a way that showed he actually cared for someone – and a child. This could apparently upset his programming. He didn't understand what all of these words meant, but they hadn't thought that he could hear them anyway, so it was clearly not meant for his ears.

But then, one of the handlers had proposed an idea – to pair the Kleiner Soldat and the Wintersoldat together, for them to work as a pair and be that much more effective and deadly.

He supposed that they must have accepted this, because he didn't go to the chair this time to forget about Yakob. And when he came out of cryo, he had another mission as was normal. But there was one difference from usual – his mission was no longer solo.

…

The Soldier supposed, years later, that most father-son outings didn't include the father prompting the son through the steps of a perfect kill and cover-up. But, he decided that he didn't care, because he'd known for years _(decades?)_ that he wasn't normal.

He didn't wonder about Yakob's mother, because he had nothing to base the idea on. He didn't wonder how he didn't remember Yakob as a baby or much about him growing up, because he was unaware that it was something to be concerned about. Yakob had discovered when he was twelve that the Winter Soldier – or simply "Soldat", as he called him – was his biological father. He had told the Soldier this when they were out on a mission, when Yakob had been shadowing him to watch how it was done and he knew that the trainers and handlers weren't listening in. The Soldier had been confused at this, because while he understood that other people had fathers, it seemed odd to think that the _Kleiner Soldat_ had one. He'd just always…been there. Yakob had had to explain how he'd found the files that said the Winter Soldier's sperm had been combined with other people's DNA and then given to a woman in captivity for him to be created.

The Soldier had looked, after that, for how a father was supposed to act with a son, because he still didn't understand and nothing made sense. He had hidden his searching from his handlers out of instinct, because he knew at least subconsciously that they would remove the knowledge from his mind if they ever found out about it.

But after hours of research, he had decided that his and Yakob's situation was not like the fathers and sons illustrated in books and online and what he saw in passing on their missions. So, he discarded all of that and simply treated Yakob how he thought he should be – how instinct told him to. A third party who saw them might have said that they acted more like brothers – but brothers with a wide enough age gap that one still took charge over the other.

Still, the Soldier felt something in his chest that a normal person would recognize as pride when Yakob successfully took out a Turkish diplomat without needing his help. It was the thirteen-year-old's first mission to kill on his own outside of the Room, with the Soldier following along in case of needing to step in. Yakob needed a couple of prompts to remember the perfect steps to hiding evidence of their involvement in the death, but he was otherwise perfect. People would still know that he was murdered, of course – an arrow to the chest illustrated _that_ pretty clearly – but the world didn't know about the Kleiner Soldat or his affinity for the bow and arrow, so they were in the clear.

" _Gut gemacht_ , Yakob," the Soldier murmured in congratulations as they made their way back to the drop point where they would be picked up.

" _Danke_ , Soldat," Yakob said with a slight smile, shifting the strap holding the arrows to his back so that it stayed in place better.

"Don't fight this time when I'm put in the chair," the Soldier said in German several minutes later as they walked. "I would have thought after the first few times that you would realize that it does you no good."

Yakob scowled, good mood disappearing at the reminder of what awaited his friend and father as soon as they returned to Germany. "I'm tired of you forgetting me all the time," he grumbled. "It's not like you're going to have a change of heart and escape from them if you remember, anyway."

"I'd rather _I_ forgot than _you_ get put in the chair again," the Soldier returned, adjusting his face mask slightly to be more comfortable.

"Except that that's _why_ they put me in the chair," Yakob argued, shoving his hands in his front pockets as they walked. "They know you don't like seeing me hurt – I'm just the leverage to keep you in line."

"I don't care how they see you – I'm going to do what I can to make sure _you_ don't have to get electricity to the brain on a regular basis like I do." The Soldier retorted.

Yakob snorted. "Except that while you know logically that your brain gets zapped regularly, _you_ don't actually remember it or know how much you're really missing." His eyes went down to watch his feet as he walked, expression infinitely sad.

"Hey," the Soldier stopped walking, tugging on Yakob's arm to get him to stop as well. "I'm sorry that I don't remember everything you've told me all the time or the time we've spent together. But our work is to help save the world, and to make it a better place. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made. The wipes are routine – it's not like you didn't know beforehand that I'd be going to the chair after this mission."

Yakob sighed and shrugged out of the older man's grip. "I know that," he groused. "But sometimes I just want to run away and go live a _normal_ life, away from HYDRA where neither of us will be zapped or frozen on the regular."

" _Halt den Mund_ ," the Soldier said sharply, grabbing Yakob's arm again, a lot less gently than before. "Do you want your handlers to hear you say that?" He shook the boy slightly, and Yakob shook his head reluctantly, not looking the Soldier in the eye. "No? Then keep your tongue in your head, or _they'll_ be the ones to remove it; you don't need your tongue to follow orders. I don't care how you feel about it, but you will _not_ say another word against HYDRA; do you understand?" Yakob nodded, a lot more subdued now, and the Soldier eyed him for a moment before nodding once and releasing his tight grasp on the pale arm. Said arm had a bruise rapidly beginning to bloom under the skin where the Soldier had held it, but no bones had cracked, so the Soldier knew that it would be back to normal within the hour.

They began walking again, silence a lot more tense than before. Finally the younger boy blurted, "It's not that I want to leave HYDRA – I don't. But…I'm just tired of seeing them put you in the chair all the time. It seems like it's happening a lot more than necessary to keep me from fighting them."

"'Order comes only through pain'," the Soldier recited. Yakob sighed, but he fell silent, not arguing his point further.

…

It was an accident, really.

No one had planned it, and it was all rather sudden, not giving his handlers any time to call the Soldiers back from the Philippines before keeping them in the base for a few months again. The aliens coming right out of a hole in the sky above New York City of course made worldwide news, and a picture of the ones who had fought to get them out was at the front of a newspaper the two passed by in their morning scouting.

The Soldier had barely glanced at it, but he was trained in catching everything he could in a single glance, and he did a double-take of the newspaper a moment later. He stopped walking, and Yakob stopped as well, though he wasn't sure what had surprised the older man so much.

He distractedly gave the newspaper seller a few pesos for the paper, and then pulled it out and stared at the picture on the front page.

It wasn't large, and it was in black and white, but it was enough. Because even without the color showing, he could easily imagine – _remember?_ – that the circular shield was red, white, and blue. And although the uniform was different, he could tell that it was Captain America, because who else would wear such a ridiculously patriotic outfit?

 _Steve._

"Steve," the Soldier breathed, staring at the man and seeing a scrawny, sickly boy instead who only came up to his chin.

" _Soldat_ ," Yakob snapped, tightly grasping his arm and switching to German so that the people around them wouldn't understand. "We need to go – I don't care what you're thinking right now, but we're already starting to get noticed, and that's not how we do this."

"Yes, the plane leaves at two," the Soldier said in perfect Illongo, for the benefit of anyone closer to them that might overhear, though his mind wasn't really on his words. "We have a couple more hours before we have to get to the airport."

"Let's get some breakfast, then," Yakob said, smoothly switching to Illongo as well as he kept his grasp on the arm while they walked down the street. "Some buko and rice, maybe…"

After they got away from the main street and possible listening ears, Yakob rounded on the Soldier.

"What's going on?" he rapped out immediately. "Who's Steve?"

"He's my friend," the Soldier said, not knowing this fact until the words had escaped.

Yakob blinked in surprise. "But you don't have friends." It wasn't said to be mean – it was simply a fact. The Soldier was just that – a soldier, with no ties to anyone else and no relations outside of his son.

"I did," the Soldier said vaguely, staring down at the paper. "Steve… He used to put newspapers in his shoes. He was smaller."

Yakob could only stare at the closest thing he had to a father as the man became a completely different person from what he was used to. No longer the mindlessly obedient, strict mentor and soldier, he was confused, and lost, and mumbling about a man – boy? – that apparently neither of them had known even existed until the Soldier saw the picture.

Finally, coming to a decision, he reached out and slapped the Soldier across the face, trying to get him to focus and come back to the present. Startled, the Soldier looked up at him, though he didn't hold his reddening cheek as most would have. (But then he wasn't like most people.)

"Pull yourself together," Yakob said in a purposely harsh voice. "Who cares if you knew this guy before? It doesn't change anything in the now."

"HYDRA," the Soldier said suddenly, eyes focused and clear for a few brief moments. "Me an' Steve…we were trying to stop HYDRA. I fell off the train."

"So _what_?" Yakob said, practically a snarl. "This changes _nothing_. We _belong_ to _HYDRA_."

"Steve could help us," the Soldier went on as though he'd said nothing. "Steve…he doesn't like bullies."

"Are you even _listening_ to me?" Yakob said incredulously. " _No one_ escapes HYDRA. After this, they're probably already on their way to come get _us_ to make sure you haven't remembered your apparent former friend. And if they don't find us, it's not too hard to believe they'll activate our kill chips. So _pull yourself together_ , because we're going back to _Germany_ today, not America."

The Soldier looked mournful, glancing between Yakob and the newspaper, but he finally seemed to understand.

"We have to find him, though," the Soldier murmured. "I don't mean now – I know we have to let HYDRA think we're still loyal, and I wouldn't risk putting you in danger with the kill chip. But…some day. Maybe in our next mission to America."

"Yeah," Yakob agreed, not believing that they could ever really escape from HYDRA. "Alright."

…

As it turned out, Yakob snapped a couple of months later. It was completely unplanned, but after the Avengers had gone public, HYDRA was a bit more paranoid, and they'd put the Soldier in the chair nine times since then. The Soldier didn't even remember his realization about this Steve – apparently Captain America – anymore. His memories of Yakob were becoming fewer, and Yakob worried that next the feelings from the memories would disappear. That was how it always went after his father had spent prolonged periods in the chair. Even Yakob had been in the chair twice since the alien attack, completely unprovoked. But they were just paranoid enough that they felt the need to threaten the Soldier once more with his safety and wellbeing.

It was after the two had been sent on their second mission since coming back from the Philippines that Yakob finally decided they had to make their break for it, and make it _soon_. They were on their way to Spain, a bit closer to home ('home' being a relative term), and Yakob made a snap decision while they were on the jet.

He grabbed a knife from his belt – his father had been through the chair just before the mission so they expected only complete obedience and didn't worry about not giving him weapons before he strictly needed them for the mission. In less than a minute, he'd killed the seven HYDRA agents and the pilot, quickly setting the buttons to go on autopilot so that he could take care of some personal issues.

"Yakob, what's going on?"

His father had only watched with narrowed eyes, sitting placidly in one of the seats while he'd quickly and systematically disposed of the agents and made sure they had no surprises on them for when they died. At least it showed that the wipe still wasn't a hundred percent successful getting rid of his father's trust in him.

"I know you don't remember everything – you've been wiped a lot more than usual the past few weeks," Yakob explained sympathetically at the older man's confused look. "And I can explain everything on the way, but right now we have to get rid of a couple of kill chips, before anyone back at HQ finds out we've gone rogue."

"We can't remove the kill chips, though," the Soldier said automatically.

Yakob winced. "We can," he corrected, fiddling with the knife in his hands. "It's just going to be _really_ fucking painful."

The Soldier's eyes darted up to his son's face, gauging how determined he was, and then he nodded once at what he apparently saw there. "What do you need me to do?"

Although he felt somewhat guilty for it, Yakob was grateful that the frequent wipes had dulled most of his father's emotions – before the Philippines, the Soldier would never have agreed to use the knife to cut into the bone of his son's forearm to remove the chip. But then again, better to be in searing agony for a few hours than dead. And he knew from experience that the bone would heal quickly, thanks to his father's DNA running through him.

Although, he reflected several minutes later as he drew a larger knife from his belt, he would rather have that agony every day for a year than have to inflict pain on his own father. Neither of them knew what the kill chip looked like in the Soldier, because it was in his metal arm, and it blended in with all of the other parts of the arm. Thus, the only solution was to completely sever the limb at the elbow to be sure the kill chip was gone. The problem was that although the arm was metal and fake, it still connected to his nerves and the pain receptors in his brain, so it was just as painful as it would have been had it been a real, flesh and blood arm.

And although the Soldier had the discipline to only groan in pain, Yakob could see the agony etched in every line of his father's face. Tossing the arm to the side, he jumped and ran over to the closest dead agent, patting him down for those tranq guns he knew the man should have. Finally finding it, he shot one of the darts with drugs strong enough to put down an elephant in his father's neck. It took a moment, but he finally passed out, and Yakob breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that the Soldier wouldn't have to be in pain any longer.

"I'll get you safe, _Soldat_ ," he murmured, going over to the plane's controls to turn them in the direction of America. "We just have to find your friend Steve. You'll be okay once we've reached Tony Stark's tower."

…

 **"Geh schneller" – Just go faster**

 **"Es ist einfacher es selber zu machen." – It's not any harder than doing it to yourself**

 **"Fick dich" – fuck you**

 **"Er taut auf – beeil dich." – he's thawing; hurry up"**

 **"Er ist fast fertig" – he's close**

 **"Gut gemacht" – well done**

 **"Halt den Mund" – hold your tongue**

 **Thank you to Lara, from AO3, for correcting my German. :)**

 **Reviews are like air - I need them to continue.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	2. Trust?

Yakob had run out of tranqs an hour ago – Soldat's body burned through a single one in twenty minutes, and it was a ten hour flight on the HYDRA-issued jet. He winced to see his father in such pain, but ignored the feeling as much as he could with all of the training that HYDRA had forced into him his entire life. He kept his eyes on the controls and out the window, making sure that nothing was going to interfere with his bid for their safety, and that they would get to the Stark tower before HYDRA could get to them.

He finally found the tower as he steered them over the city, and found that rather than it saying _Stark_ on the side, it now had a stylized 'A' – probably for Avengers. So, it was Avengers Tower now, he mused as he moved to the convenient landing pad.

It was oddly quiet, he thought as he landed the jet on the open spot. He would have thought all of them would have come out to attack at the foreign jet on their turf, but it looked like nobody was home.

 _No,_ he realized suddenly, powering down the jet. _They're waiting._

"Yakob," Soldat panted after a moment of them sitting there, doing nothing.

"Just a moment, Soldat," Yakob murmured, going to the control with the radio. He thought he might be able to connect it to the frequency inside the tower, so that he could talk them down before he came out and exposed them to attack.

But, he discovered, there was some sort of block on it that he wasn't able to get through in the next few minutes, so he turned on the PA speakers on the outside of the jet, hoping that people floors down wouldn't be able to hear it.

"Hello?" he called out, not able to tell if the speakers were working as he couldn't hear them from inside the jet. "Mr. Stark?"

Looking through the front window, he could see no movement through the glass that looked like it housed a workshop. Stark's, no doubt.

"We don't mean you or the Avengers any harm," Yakob continued when he got no response. "It is just my father and me on this craft. I can explain more when we get off, but I know you're probably waiting to attack right now, and I don't want my father to get hurt further if you attacked as soon as the hatch opened." He paused, unsure what to say next to assure them before finally deciding that he'd explained as much as he could for the moment – details were unnecessary at this point and wouldn't be believed. "Um…I'm just going to open it now. Please don't hurt us."

Hoping that it was enough for now, he turned off the speaker, hitting the button that would open the hatch as promised. As it slowly lowered, Yakob picked up his bow and went back to his father, who was still clearly in great pain, but was trained enough to have heard and understood what was going on.

"I sure hope you're right that we can trust them to help us," Soldat said, and Yakob could tell that he was nervous, even though it didn't show on his face.

"Steve will," Yakob said with a confidence he didn't feel as he watched his father rise without help. "You said he was your friend."

"I don't remember," Soldat grunted, moving toward the opening.

"No, you won't," Yakob agreed, walking just a couple of inches in front of his father, just in case. He didn't finish the rest of his thought – _But perhaps he will._

After they'd got off the jet, they went to the glass doors, which surprisingly opened automatically. Cautiously, Yakob stepped inside, running his thumb nervously along the bow in his right hand and looking around.

Then Iron Man appeared in front of him, in full uniform so that he couldn't see Stark's face as the hand was held out with the palm lit up in preparation for the repulsor beam, a clear warning.

"Hold it right there, Legolas." The voice was filtered through whatever speakers made his voice loud enough for people to hear without him shouting through the armor, but Yakob recognized Stark's voice from videos he'd occasionally seen and only remembered viewing in that moment.

Slowly, Yakob raised his hands. "We mean you no harm," he carefully repeated his earlier words from the jet.

"Yeah?" a voice behind Iron Man said. The Widow, his mind supplied – the only woman in the Avengers. He glanced over at her to see the redheaded woman pointing a small hand gun at him. He blinked a bit, noticing that she was in jeans and a T-shirt, and although she was barefoot, it didn't detract from her deadly persona.

"Put the bow down." She finished, eyes hard.

Yakob paused, before deciding that the best thing to do at that point to get their trust would be to obey their commands. Moving his eyes back to the repulsor beam in particular, he lowered himself slightly to put the bow on the floor in front of him. His quiver of arrows followed directly after.

"Yakob," his father's voice said warningly behind him in a low voice, clearly disapproving of the easy compliance.

"We need their help," Yakob returned, speaking as much to his father as to the Avengers. Although he couldn't see the others, he knew that they were there, probably all pointing their own weapons at the two of them. "It's not as though we have anywhere else to go." He rose just as slowly to his feet, before taking a couple of steps back and away from the bow, toward Soldat.

"Why don't you tell your old man to drop the weapons too, then?" Widow spoke again, her voice casual, but Yakob could recognize the threat in it.

"Soldat?" he prompted, keeping his eyes on the repulsor beam, the most immediate and closest threat.

"We will be defenseless," Soldat argued, sounding cornered. Yakob could practically feel his eyes darting around the room, looking for exits. His mind worked quickly to find a way to get a bit of the Avengers' trust, so that it might hopefully assure his father.

"Steve," Yakob said suddenly, eyes moving from the repulsor beam to the blond man beside Widow. He was in casual clothes as well, but his shield was like none other and easily identified him as Captain America – the man that his father had recognized several weeks before. He looked surprised to be addressed, but he was paying attention to Yakob, so he went on.

"He said that he knew you – that you were his friend," he said, eyeing the captain so he'd be able to ascertain if he was trustworthy. "He doesn't remember now because of the Chair, but he said you were helping take down HYDRA with him, but he fell off a train." He saw the captain's face go to one of shock, and he shrugged in response. "I suppose you know what that means. He was never able to explain it to me before we got back to base."

The captain stepped forward, looking past Yakob and to his father. Feeling the eyes on him, Soldat glanced up, and the captain's face cleared of any doubt he had a moment before as the face was revealed from behind the curtain of hair. Yakob was glad that his father had removed the goggles and mask in their flight over the Atlantic so that the process could be hurried along that much more.

"Bucky?" the captain breathed.

"Is…" Soldat hesitated. "Is that my name?"

"Rogers, it might not be him," Widow warned, her aim on the gun not faltering. "It could be a trick."

"No," Steve said assuredly, not glancing at her, taking a step closer to Soldat. "No, it's Bucky."

"Everyone knows Bucky Barnes fell off a train while HYDRA bases were being taken down," Widow countered. "And you yourself have seen the tech that can alter a face."

"He said you put newspapers in your shoes," Yakob said suddenly, hoping that this was true and not something his mind conjured after his most recent trip to the Chair. He saw the confirmation on the captain's face, and felt relief that the knowledge apparently was accurate – it was something more personal that the captain would understand.

"Stand down, Tony," Steve said, relaxing and coming closer. Iron Man's arm remained raised for a few moments longer, making a point, before he finally dropped it, the repulsors firing down. Yakob remained tense though, because while the ones he recognized as Thor and the Hulk in doctor form (what was his name again?) relaxed at the apparent lack of threat, Widow didn't waver her aim of the gun on his father.

"какова ваша миссия?" she said suddenly. Yakob blinked in surprise at the sudden Russian, but his mind had already translated the question – _What is your mission?_

"Yakob," Soldat said, and for a moment Yakob thought he was talking to him, before he realized that he was responding to Widow's question.

"Я следую за ним," Soldat finished quietly. _I follow him._

Yakob was the only one to understand exactly what his father meant by that. After having been so recently wiped, Soldat was following pure instincts, and his instincts had told him for years to trust Yakob above anyone else. If it had been up to him, Soldat never would have come seeking help from an apparent former friend, and Yakob knew that he was feeling extremely uneasy at that moment, but because Yakob insisted that they would be alright, Soldat trusted him to take the reins on this one.

"Buck, what happened to you?" the captain questioned him, apparently not caring to address the Widow's concerns at the moment. "You're…how are you alive?"

"Captain, Soldat does not remember most of it," Yakob cut in. He knew how it could cause Soldat stress when he was asked a question he didn't know the answer to – especially one about his past, recent or otherwise. "HYDRA has…unmade him, many times. He does not always recognize me either, let alone remember the circumstances of how he got here. His memory will begin returning to him in a couple of weeks, and you can ask him questions later."

"What do we call you, then?" the Widow challenged before the captain could find a response to that. He noticed how she had pointed her gun down, but both hands were still on it and he easily recognized the loose posture that said she was ready to attack at a moment's notice. "Winter and Kleiner? Somehow I don't think that will be keeping a low profile."

Yakob kept the frown he felt from appearing on his face with the ease of long practice. "I'm not so little anymore, Widow," he told her blandly, unsurprised that she knew on sight who they were. "I am twenty-seven years old."

"Who's your doctor, because that is _hella_ good Botox," Stark piped in, and Yakob absently noted that the face plate had come up so that he could see the man's face now.

"You look like a teenager," the Hulk spoke for the first time in agreement with Stark. His voice was quiet, but not shy exactly – more like he was watchful and unassuming. Yakob mentally noted to himself to watch this man, and not just because he could turn into an enormous green rage monster.

"Courtesy of cryogenic freezers after I completed my training," Yakob said dryly. It was because of the freezers they stored him in for however long when they didn't need him that he hated the cold. Soldat was the same way, even if he didn't always remember why he didn't like colder temperatures, due to his frequent 'resetting'.

"Damn," Stark muttered with what seemed to be sympathy. He was ignored.

"So…you're Bucky's…son?" the captain was the one to ask, struggling for words as he remembered Yakob's words from earlier. He glanced between Soldat and Yakob as he spoke. At Yakob's single, wordless nod, he questioned, "Who's your mother?"

"I have no idea," Yakob said plainly, honestly. "HYDRA is not in the habit of taking down names of their prisoners, and after I was born they didn't bother keeping her alive." The captain jerked like he had been slapped, so Yakob addressed what he supposed was the concern. "She was not raped – they injected her with Soldat's 'donation', and was kept healthy during her months of pregnancy." He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to the asset she was housing, after all."

"Why did this wicked faction deem it necessary to create an adolescent, and then proceed to slaughter the mother as soon as the deed was accomplished?" Thor spoke up, looking troubled.

"Well, they didn't want an 'adolescent', as you put it; they wanted a genetically enhanced super-soldier that they could easily control." Yakob responded, his answer causing the captain to jerk. "And they weren't making any headway in replicating the serum used for Captain America, and the fact that it worked on Soldat in the war was a fluke at best, so they took Soldat's DNA in the hopes that any offspring would be enhanced. I was the only one that took, so they put all their effort into molding me how they wanted." He shrugged in forced casualness, still feeling uncomfortable with all of the dangerous people in front of him. The fact that Soldat had remained silent this entire time while they asked their questions did nothing to comfort him – but then, he reminded himself, his father was in agony at the moment.

"And how enhanced are you?" the Hulk asked, eyes curious.

"Oh, not as much as Soldat – I have perhaps about sixty percent of his capabilities." He shrugged again. "Just as Captain America, he needs an elephant tranquilizer to go down, but he'll be down twenty minutes rather than five. I'll be down for perhaps an hour."

"Yakob," Soldat finally spoke up again behind him, the word a hiss of warning once more as he told them their weaknesses. Yakob didn't bother saying anything this time – he knew it was a stupid gamble to tell possible enemies how to debilitate him and his father, but he thought that at least semi-transparency would be best to gain their trust at the moment.

"You said HYDRA had you," the captain said after a troubled glance to his father. "But HYDRA went down at the end of the war."

Yakob snorted, truly amused for the first time since arriving, albeit a dark humor. "Perhaps so," he agreed. "But I'm sure you've heard before – 'cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.'" The captain looked sick.

But suddenly he didn't care about the captain, because Stark, who had been oddly quiet for much too long, had fired something from his suit, and Yakob's reflexes weren't quick enough to even see, let alone catch, the thing that caused his father to gasp suddenly behind him as though in pain.

Instantly, without looking at his father, his hand had snapped back to grab a gun that still hung at Soldat's waist, and he'd had the safety flicked off and barrel raised to point at Stark's still open face before Widow had her own gun back up and pointed at him. The captain, the Hulk, and Thor all tensed as well, ready as the others to attack at first sign he would shoot.

Stark raised his hands in the universal sign for surrender, though it wasn't all that effective when one took into account that even with palms raised, he could have an arsenal of weapons pointed at him without showing it on the outside. So Yakob didn't trust it one bit – especially because the man didn't look nervous or scared as one normally would when staring down the barrel of a gun. Even Iron Man couldn't survive a bullet to his unprotected face.

"I didn't hurt him, kid," Stark said reassuringly, but still with infuriating calm. "Look – EMP to the arm. It was hurting him, right? I shut off the receptors sending the pain signals to his brain with the little button I shot to his arm."

"Soldat?" Yakob requested for confirmation.

"It doesn't hurt anymore, Yakob," Soldat backed up Stark's claims, but it was the way it was said more than the actual words that convinced him. No one could fake that level of relief if they were still in agony – not even the Winter Soldier.

Without another moment of doubt, trusting his father, he clicked the safety back on the gun and let his arm fall back to his side. He nodded a wordless thanks to Stark, and the others relaxed once more. Widow still looked wary, but he knew that Russian assassins were naturally suspicious, and she'd relaxed enough that Yakob was relatively certain that he wouldn't suddenly be shot at or attacked.

"This is cause for much feasting and celebration!" Thor suddenly boomed, and Yakob would have jumped were he a normal person, and not trained to keep his emotions – including being startled – under wraps.

Thor clapped his hand on the captain's shoulder, continuing, "The good captain's friend has returned to us, and bears the wonderful news of a son! Come, we must dine and share stories with one another!"

"I find it's best to just go along with it when Thor wants food," Stark said to Yakob and Soldat, loud enough that everyone else could hear as well. He pressed something on his armor, or at least Yakob assumed he did, because it suddenly opened to allow him to step out, revealing that he was wearing nothing more than a tank top and a pair of sweats. Yakob found himself unsurprised – the others were casual as well, because clearly no one had been expecting visitors.

"JARVIS, will you order us some Thai?" Stark requested. "Ooh, or should it be Chinese? You know what, order both, and get extra egg rolls. While you're at it, throw in some pizza – I think fourteen should be enough – you know the ratio of large pepperonis and veggie pizzas. Just have it sent right up to the penthouse."

"Shall I add some drinks as well, sir?" The voice suddenly came from the speakers above them, and Yakob tightened his hand around the gun still in his hand, not having known that another was there.

"I do not need your sass, Jarvis, I get that enough from Bruce." Tony snarked. "And yes – get some sodas, now that you're asking."

"As you wish, sir." Although the words were compliant enough, even Yakob could hear the sarcasm intended behind it, and he didn't even know the man.

"Oh, you don't know Jarvis!" Stark said as though remembering, taking in his tense posture. "Don't worry – you'll learn all the ins and outs of the tower soon enough – let's go to the common area and chat. After all this, I need some alcohol, 'cause this is some serious shit to take in and I want to hear more."

 **...**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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